The Appaloosa horse
Appaloosas generally have a mottled skin, colorless sclera (the part of the eye around the cornea) and vertically striped hooves.
The breed history of this unusual horse is not completely understood. There is plenty of evidence that spotted horses were being bred in a number of geographical regions in 'the old world', and we know of cave paintings which are as old as to 18000BC illustrating mottled horses that may be the origins of the modern appaloosa. It is very likely that the mottled skin was in the first instance a form of camouflage, much as the stripes on a zebra.
The modern-day Appaloosa is descended from horses shipped to Mexico and the u.s. by conquistadors. These were passed on to the Nez perce people, who masterfully turned them into the marvelous horses that we know these days.
The appaloosa was in the first instance called the "Palouse horse", even though gradually the name transformed into the present-day variant, "Appaloosa".
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